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Rocky’s World: The history of Thanksgiving Day football and the Chiefs

Thanksgiving Day football is part of the fabric of American tradition.

It began on November 30, 1876, in Hoboken, New Jersey; it was cold and wet.

The temperature was in the low 30s and rain fell from the sky, but the turf was frozen so hard that it battered the players' bodies as they were driven to the ground. This was the stage for the very first Thanksgiving Day football game, as Yale faced off against Princeton before a lively crowd that sported a mixture of Princeton orange and black and Yale white and blue.